https://eos.org/features/a-lidars-eye-view-of-how-forests-are-faring By Van R. Kane ,   Liz Van Wagtendonk  and   Andrew Brenner , Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: Success in Yosemite is driving the wider use of lidar surveys to support forest health and wildfire resilience, study wildlife habitats, and monitor water resources. Building the perfect campfire requires the right mix of ingredients: plenty of kindling, a spark to ignite it, and large, dry logs to keep the fire burning strong. Unfortunately, fire suppression strategies adopted long ago—combined more recently with severe droughts and climate change—have created this same mixture writ large across many of the dry forests of the western United States, such as those in Yosemite National Park and elsewhere in the Sierra Nevada. ...Despite their destructive power, fires are natural phenomena in many forests, where they are essential to the biomes’ long-term health. Decades of field-based studies have built th...